Kraftwerk Lose Copyright Case in Germany

Yesterday (November 20), Germany's highest civil court ruled against Kraftwerk in a copyright suit, overturning a ruling from a Hamburg state court that established that repurposing even the smallest sample of a song counts as copyright infringement, according to an AP report.

The sample in question is a two-second piece of Kraftwerk's "Metal on Metal", which German rap producer Moses Pelham (the defendant in the case) used in Sabrina Setlur's 1997 track "Nur Mir". Man, of all the samples there have been of their work, this was the one that set Kraftwerk off?

Despite the apparent win for Girl Talk types, this new court ruling still forbids sampling a song's melody, and it requires that a sample "be part of a completely new musical work bearing no resemblance to the original," according to the AP.

Kraftwerk's recourse with the case now is to take it back to the Hamburg court that made the previous ruling. Sounds strange, but I barely understand the U.S. appeals process, much less Germany's.

Kraftwerk have some tour dates this fall Down Under and in Asia. Their next show is tomorrow (November 22) in Melbourne.